a style I experimented with for a long while without much success, I
add the disclaimer that this is a mediocre poem even by lax standards.
sorry
KS
On 07/04/2008, kasper salonen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> now you mention it, my 'artistic process' for many years actually
> consisted of recording snaps that I witnessed on trains -- I've lived
> by small train stations all my life (in Raynes Park, then in Rekola)
> and especially here in Finland trains have been a central part of my
> life, moving between big city (H:ki) & little. it's been a sort of
> mobile sanctuary, and I considered at one point that the fact that I
> mostly recorded visuals & ideas witnessed at breakneck speed in
> glimpses must have had an effect on why & how I wrote. a penchant for
> snaps maybe, but always edited ones.
>
> anyway here's one train-poem from 2006.
>
> "in a long glance"
>
> in the warm whack of low temperatures
> a copse wastes space, its draggled streams thinking in rivers¯
> tall muscles leaning at rails like relics, hair a great mess¯
>
> the sun's fresh flare arrives professionally,
> tending trenches like a medic, too late to avert it:
>
> where a stillborn quiver of a dog snarls and bleeds
> and foams is an eruption of trees, an aborigine cathedral
> with no roof. seen from the train in a long glance
> it smoulders and the cries of the wounded dot and fill the clearing,
> yelling names, invisible like a pheasant with its choked cluck-scream
> half-hiding in weeds, a dirty wraith
>
> among the rubbish¯paths and graves in a smashed wetland,
> the paths overcome by bogs
> and their wet rubbish, chill eke of canker and crap.
>
> *
>
> several stops later
> where the engines
>
> slow to a brisk walk,
> huge and polite, letting
>
> another train rev and ride
> by with its averted cargo
>
> a bay's ice retreats, the ducks broaden
> their communes¯
>
> two rows on
> a father and young daughter
> talk in Russian, point answer laugh
> in Russian¯and the trees have small flowers
> growing amazed from their trunks, from the palms of their hands¯
> and flat stretches of grass, looking hale and gradual... and the rocks¯!
>
>
>
> KS
>
>
> On 07/04/2008, Halvard Johnson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > Are we really done with train poems already?
> >
> > Here's one by another:
> >
> >
> > I am a horse
> >
> > I travel in a train
> > that is overcrowded
> > in my compartment
> > each seat is taken by a woman
> > with a man sitting on her lap
> > the air is unbearably tropical
> > all the travellers have an enormous appetite
> > they eat without ceasing
> > suddenly the men
> > begin to whimper
> > and long for the maternal breast
> > they unbutton the women's blouses
> > and suck the fresh milk to their hearts' content
> > I alone do not suck
> > nor am I suckled
> > nobody sits on my lap
> > and I'm not on anyone's lap
> > because I am a horse
> > immense and upright I sit
> > with my hind-legs up on the train seat
> > and comfortably lean
> > on my fore-legs
> > I whinny a raucous neigh neigh neigh
> > on my breast glitter
> > the sex buttons of sex appeal
> > in neat little rows
> > like the glittering buttons on uniforms
> > oh summertime
> > oh wide wide world
> >
> > --Hans Arp
> >
> >
> > Hal
> >
> > Halvard Johnson
> > ================
> > [log in to unmask]
> > http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html
> > http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
> > http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
> > http://www.hamiltonstone.org
> > http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html
> >
>
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